strongly to recommend the bird in preference to the beast.  Dinner at length concluded, he rose, and apparently led his phantom guest from the table, and then returning to his arm-chair, threw himself into it, and, crossing his hands upon his breast, commenced a careful examination of the cinders and himself.  His rumination ended in a doze, and his doze in a dream, in which he fancied himself a Brobdignag Java sparrow during the moulting season.  His cage was surrounded by beautiful and blooming girls, who seemed to pity his condition, and vie with each other in proposing the means of rendering him more comfortable.  Some spoke of elastic cotton shirts, linsey-wolsey jackets, and silk nightcaps; others of merino hose, silk feet and cotton tops, shirt-buttons and warming-pans; whilst Mrs. Greatgirdle and Mrs. Waddledot sang an echo duet of “What a pity the bird is alone.”

  “A change came o’er the spirit of his dream.”

He thought that the moulting season was over, and that he was rejoicing in the fulness of a sleeky plumage, and by his side was a Java sparrowess, chirping and hopping about, rendering the cage as populous to him as though he were the tenant of a bird-fancier’s shop.  Then—­he awoke just as Old John was finishing a glass of Madeira, preparatory to arousing Collumpsion, for the purpose of delivering to him a scented note, which had just been left by the footman of Mrs. Waddledot.

It was lucky for John that A.C.A. had been blessed with pleasant dreams, or his attachment to Madeira might have occasioned his discharge from No. 24, Pleasant-terrace.

The note was an invitation to Mrs. Waddledot’s opera-box for that evening.  The performance was to be Rossini’s “La Cenerentola,” and as Collumpsion recollected the subject of the opera, his heart fluttered in his bosom.  A prince marrying a cinder-sifter for love!  What must the happy state be—­or rather what must it not be—­to provoke such a condescension!

Collumpsion never appeared to such advantage as he did that evening; he was dressed to a miracle of perfection—­his spirits were so elastic that they must have carried him out of the box into “Fop’s-alley,” had not Mrs. Waddledot cleverly surrounded him by the detachment from the corps of eighteen daughters, which had (on that night) been placed under her command.

Collumpsion’s state of mind did not escape the notice of the fair campaigners, and the most favourable deductions were drawn from it in relation to the charitable combination which they had formed for his ultimate good, and all seemed determined to afford him every encouragement in their power.  Every witticism that he uttered elicited countless smiles—­every criticism that he delivered was universally applauded—­in short, Agamemnon Collumpsion Applebite was voted the most delightful beau in the universe, and Agamemnon Collumpsion Applebite gave himself a plumper to the same opinion.

On the 31st of the following month, a string of carriages surrounded St. George’s Church, Hanover-square, and precisely at a quarter to twelve, A.M., Agamemnon Collumpsion Applebite placed a plain gold ring on the finger of Miss Juliana Theresa Waddledot, being a necessary preliminary to the introduction of our hero, the “Heir of Applebite.”